PERCEPTION in the UNIFIED FIELD
Death Valley – Beyond the Illusion of Form 1997
43" x 64" mixed media on canvas
IV
QUALITIES of the UNIFIED FIELD (cont.)
Peaches – Unified Field 2023
8" x 15" mixed media on canvas
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.” Max Planck, theoretical physicist. His discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
As you approach the Unified Field you will notice that all lower, self-centered sentiments start to fall away, and compassion towards others increases. No amount of self-work can lead to the realization of the Unified Field as directly as changing your focus away from its habitual preoccupation with self and balancing it with directing your attention to others. Visualizing the truth of mankind, at one with the Unified Field, will transform your consciousness in unexpected ways. Here we come to one of the fundamental laws of the Unified Field. The principle is simple: what you perceive in others becomes your own reality.
Exercise 4: In this exercise, you will be focusing on others. To begin, go to a place where there are a lot of people, like a coffee shop, the mall, park, or airport. Take a few moments to become relaxed and focused. Begin by feeling once again the peace and stillness of the vast Unified Field holding and permeating everything, within as well as outside of you. Observe your sense of self growing more and more transparent as you imagine gently merging into this field, going deeper and deeper into it. To whatever degree possible, imagine becoming one with the vastness of the Unified Field, letting all sense of a limited self-image gently melt away. There is a saying in India, “Be like a salt doll and dive into the Ganges.”
Next, look at those about you. Move past the perception of their bodies and their personalities. Realize that in the deepest part of their being, they are also one with the reality of the Unified Field, just as you are. It is their very nature.
Now go deeper into it, continuing to see others from this perspective, until you start to sense the shared oneness you have with them in the Unified Field. As you go deeper into it you will find that it is impossible to experience the Unified Field and still maintain a sense of a separate self.
You can take it a step further and visualize having this living Unified Field expanding out beyond the immediate environment you are in, to incorporate more of the whole town and all the people in the town, then extending out as far as you wish to imagine.
Pears III 2002
9" x 9" watercolor and pastel
You may perceive as you begin to experience the Unified Field, distinctions start to disappear of “me here and objects there.” Things outside you can now be seen as inside you, held by the largeness of your being. Experiences will come, where you look up at the sky and suddenly there will come the strange but exhilarating sense that the birds are soaring through you. Or as you look at the town in the valley below, with all its buildings and people, the feeling will come that it is all existing in you; or that the night sky with the moon, the planets, and all the stars, are shining their delicate light in the vastness of what you are.
Or it can go the other way, where you feel like you are in a thing: perhaps it will happen as you look at a tree or a bed of flowers, and you feel the reality of their existence so intensely that in an instant, your being is transported and gently enters into them. And this expansion feels so natural and so joyful. You are starting to remember your real Self—and how vast, fluid, and free you really are. You are starting to enter the life of the Unified Field, a shared oneness with things.
Portuguese Beach 2017 49" x 81" mixed media on canvas
Chico Buttes VII 2011 44.5" x 60" mixed media on canvas
In the last exercise above, we used the tools of effort and visualization. But ultimately there will come revelations with very little or no effort on your part. It is important to remember that there are real limits to efforts. And there is a point where they are antithetical to a deep letting go, serving to only strengthen the sense of self you are trying to go beyond. But for the most part our obstacles to truth are not from efforts, but from the lack of effort, commitment, as well as the lack of vigilance.